Rahul Gandhi's speech a cameo performance

As a message, the speech invoked two points, one about voice and subaltern politics, and the other, about ambiguities of governance.

By Shiv Visvanathan

The Jaipur conference of Congress was historic in many ways. It witnessed the completion of one of the longest political gestations in Indian history, the coming of age of Rahul Gandhi. This involved two separate events. The first was the anointing of the man as successor and the other was his acceptance speech. The first was greeted with relief and the second was source of celebration at least within Congress. A Congress which was in suspended animation between Manmohan's reticence and Sonia's illness suddenly felt a surge towards the future. There is a sense that Congress has consolidated itself around a future leader. The future can now be seen as battle between Rahul and Modi. While dynastic succession as a ritual was clear, Rahul's speech was the subject of mixed responses.

The speech itself was a cameo performance. The speech writer seems to have produced the right rhythms, the timely rhetorical flourishes. As a message, the speech invoked two points, one about voice and subaltern politics, and the other, about ambiguities of governance. The linking metaphor was one of the families. Rahul invoked the family at three levels. He talked of his mother, the Nehru- Gandhi family, and Congress party as the largest family in India. The family he seemed to suggest provides a sense of history, of intimacy and of inclusiveness and conviviality. The family as a metaphor triggers the problematic part of speech and we shall return to it.

After the protocols of acknowledgement, Rahul Gandhi summoned the politics of the voice. Congress, he claimed magisterially, was the party that listened to voice. He created a potted history of voice by citing the green revolution as liberating the voice of the farmer, bank nationalisation as creating voices for creditors, IT as creating voices for the mobile phone. Voice, he said, was the essence and openness of democracy.

It was a powerful gambit and one could sense that the audience was impressed. His next major theme was decentralisation as a catalyst for governance. He asked eloquently, why should a chief minster be responsible for the appointment of a teacher or why should Supreme Court do the work of lower courts? He then added that ours is a society that honors position but does not respect a man of knowledge. As a result, voice and position are separated and democracy vitiated.

These were two brilliant tropes, one on voice and one on governance, both of which gave a powerful resonance to the speech. The two parts were tied together by an anecdote about Sonia Gandhi. Rahul said that he could not sleep the night before. His mother came into his room not to congratulate him. She was crying and warned him that power was poison. The challenge, he said, was not to be seduced by its attributes but to face up to his responsibilities.

The invocation of the family, the ode to the mother, however threw the monkey's wrench into the speech. Its contradictions unfolded as one asked how could dynastic continuity create party openness.There was an element of schizophrenia where a moment of dynastic anointing becomes a promissory note for internal party democracy. Voice sadly becomes an empty word, as Rahul adds that there is no place for dissenters in the Congress party.

There was a sense that our Indian Hamlet had graduated into a proud boy scout holding forth on governance and voice. The question remained whether he had the guts, the leadership to revamp a party in crisis. Can a party graduation speech appeal to a nation? Viewed as text, there was something impressive and hopeful about Rahul's speech. There was clarity to the thought rhythm to the presentation. There was a touch of innocence to it, a conviction that good intentions could clean up muddy systems like Congress.

If one looks at it, Sonia's speech and Rahul's were inversions of each other. One heralded the problem, the other provided concepts for a positive handling of it. There was an implicit passing of the conceptual torch if one read the speeches together.

There was a second problem to the speech. Voice read as a separate world hermetically sealed off from governance. Governance invoked decentralisation. The text was more managerial while the section on voice was more politically emotional. The first section was a politician's rhetoric. The second often became a managerial solution. Despite all these, one needs to hope and read Rahul's speech as a promissory note to the future. His new found confidence may be the only wager we have against the ambitions of Modi. May be time and events of the next one-and-ahalf years may give him the leadership skills for battle 2014.